Happy Face

As the fixtures worked out, we were 3rd or so after 10 and 11 games and you were having a pop at me for saying it was an easy start. If the fixtures had come out with the games played in November/December being played at the start, in late August to October, then we'd have been 18th when you were making that argument. Would you have been confident of the European push under those circumstances? The latter run of fixtures is every bit as informative about our ability as the former. I say moreso, unless we add a few more players before the window closes. I'm not arguing that we are going to push on for Europe and i dont get or care for your hypothetical point. i'm arguing against using arbitrary samples of matches to predict the future. As you know stats, you'll know that form and injuries creates a dependency on the outcomes of events, with previous events affecting future probabilities. This form effect creates mini-pathways and trends in events across time but the only important one is the long-term one that stretches from match 1 to match 38. Now nothing is certain and those trends can be mis-leading which is why judgement is important. My judgement that 3 wins out of 4 and 60 minutes of the Liverpool match where i thought we were shading the game means we have the resilience and quality in the side to maintain the new trend. I agree completely that Ba / Tiote's absence and no new players (or some leaving) would massively call this into question. I just dont get the emphasis on what is essentially 6 games in your 9 where we pick up 2 points (3 where we werent expected to pick up anything and 3 when we didnt pick up anything where expected for the ONLY TIME THIS SEASON). In the other 3 of your 9 we do as expected. It's all judgement, but my mini pathway is longer than yours. Not a euphemism. Its all about the point of inflection, that one result which sends you on a new trajectory of form. For Sunderland, their defeat to us was meant to have been that sort of result. I think the Bolton game was an inflection point after our poor run of form, even though the Liverpool game was a disappointment. A previous point where our form changes was the away defeat at City, an inevitable result but predictive of the next 6 games unfortunately. Its all swings and roundabouts. The next 3 games will be a good barometer of that.

I meant to vote 53-54 but pressed null by accident.

As the fixtures worked out, we were 3rd or so after 10 and 11 games and you were having a pop at me for saying it was an easy start. If the fixtures had come out with the games played in November/December being played at the start, in late August to October, then we'd have been 18th when you were making that argument. Would you have been confident of the European push under those circumstances? The latter run of fixtures is every bit as informative about our ability as the former. I say moreso, unless we add a few more players before the window closes. I'm not arguing that we are going to push on for Europe and i dont get or care for your hypothetical point. i'm arguing against using arbitrary samples of matches to predict the future. As you know stats, you'll know that form and injuries creates a dependency on the outcomes of events, with previous events affecting future probabilities. This form effect creates mini-pathways and trends in events across time but the only important one is the long-term one that stretches from match 1 to match 38. Now nothing is certain and those trends can be mis-leading which is why judgement is important. My judgement that 3 wins out of 4 and 60 minutes of the Liverpool match where i thought we were shading the game means we have the resilience and quality in the side to maintain the new trend. I agree completely that Ba / Tiote's absence and no new players (or some leaving) would massively call this into question. I just dont get the emphasis on what is essentially 6 games in your 9 where we pick up 2 points (3 where we werent expected to pick up anything and 3 when we didnt pick up anything where expected for the ONLY TIME THIS SEASON). In the other 3 of your 9 we do as expected. It's all judgement, but my mini pathway is longer than yours. Not a euphemism.

As the fixtures worked out, we were 3rd or so after 10 and 11 games and you were having a pop at me for saying it was an easy start. If the fixtures had come out with the games played in November/December being played at the start, in late August to October, then we'd have been 18th when you were making that argument. Would you have been confident of the European push under those circumstances? The latter run of fixtures is every bit as informative about our ability as the former. I say moreso, unless we add a few more players before the window closes.

As is generally the case with the more reasonable posters i'm not even sure what the argument is here. I think we agree broadly, and semantics is the only issue. The first 9 games were easier. Only 3 games against the current top 10, average league position of the opposition was 13th, but we did what we've never done before and got results from those easy games. 19 points from that was brilliant. The 9 games in November/December was a harder test, some harder teams, average position of 9th. 8 points from those games is not good enough considering 5 of the teams are lower than us (between 9th and 18th). We earned the points early in the season so we could afford to drop them more recently, we've played every team and have our current position on merit. My view is the more recent form, with injuries and suspensions, is a better indicator of how the second half of the season will go than that initial run when we had a first 11 that didn't need to change at all. I'll be astounded if we manage to get 30 points out of 57 again....but I was astounded when we did it earlier, so fingers crossed. Is it recent form for everyone or just us? Does City's poor run of results predict their second half of the season. In fact, lets look at the recent runs of the top 4. City won 2 of last 5 and have lost at home for the first time in ages against a side we tanked and they lost to the mackems. Thats them fucked on your logic. Man U have won 3 of their last 5 but lost to shitty Blackburn and a side you contend is not as good as they appear, i.e. us. Poor them. Spurs are unbeaten in 5 but dropped points against Swansea, which seems to have a huge weighting in your system, lets hope its just your system for their sake. Chelsea have 1 league win in 5 games which is fairly shit, especially when you see they dropped points at Wigan and Fulham and lost to Villa, all weighted highly by your predictions for the second half of the season. The nature of 'form' means predictions / assessments of how games should / should have gone are not 'independent'. Otherwise Chelsea never drop points against Wigan. The only thing that matters is the total run of form over the season and using 3 games where we picked up 1 point against supposedly poor sides (one of which drew with City the next match) to make predictions is as daft as using the Man U result. I know you are meant to be using 9 games but in reality its only those 3 games that have gone against expectations. But you know that's not what I've done, nowhere have I mentioned 3 games here or 4 there. I've used 2 months which is half the season gone. Do a custom table on November Decembers results. http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/premier-league/2011-2012/custom-table The table hardly changes, no clubs move more than a few positions, apart from us dropping from 7th to 18th.... 1 Manchester United 2 Tottenham Hotspur 3 Arsenal 4 Manchester City 5 Liverpool 6 Chelsea 7 Stoke City 8 Everton 9 West Bromwich Albion 10 Aston Villa 11 Fulham 12 Wigan Athletic 13 Sunderland 14 Norwich City 15 Wolverhampton Wndrs 16 Swansea City 17 Blackburn Rovers 18 Newcastle Unite 19 Bolton Wanderers 20 Queens Park Rangers

I was looking at our big expensive buys as a percentage of the UK transfer record to see which were actually fur coat and no knickers. So shearer was the record at the time - 100% - and our most "expensive player" ever. Definitely worth every penny. Next up are Tino and Ferdinand (88% and 70% of the Stan Collymore fee that held the record at the time), given that we recouped 80% and 100% of their fees, again you have to say they were worth every penny. Michael Owen is next at 58% of the Rio fee that was the record at that time. A total let down. That's followed by Peacock, Albert, Warren Barton, Batty, Fox, Speed and Robert, all between 34% and 50% of the record fees at their time of arrival, and none of them ever cited as particularly costly. All were reasonable to excellent investments. Certainly not cited as flagrant examples of poor investment. Luque (32%) failure and recouped nowt. Martins (32%) Recouped all the money and he did ok Andy Cole (31%) Trebbled our money and one of the best signings we ever made Woodgate (31%) recouped all our money and performed very well. We can all list the flops at the club, they stick out as memorable failures, but they were always in the minority and aren't predominantly our most ambitious signings, generally buying top quality has given us a good return.

CT choosing words carefully to justify the transfer policy. Over the last 5 years we've a net spent less than all the other clubs, despite player sales far in excess of most of them. The fact Man u sold Ronaldo doesn't alter the fact we're more geared up to selling our best players than other top half clubs are.

come back, baby come back come back baby come back b b bye bye bye bye b b bye bye bye bye i must admit i was a clown to be messin around but that doesnt mean that u have to leave town yes and give me one more try because alovelike this should never ever die yes with me colur t.v and me cd collection of bob marley yes with me bag of sensi and we can be together for eternity

Yet I've never seen cheering for Smith being dragged off. You'll have to take this into your own hands. Bring an extendable vuvuzela to the game and if someone boos Obertan plant it right in their earhole and let off a few honks--that'll show 'em. I try singing songs for him but no-one joins in. To the tune of Over and Over by Hot chip... Obertan Obertan Obertan Ober... Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal The joy of stepping over really is in you The stewards had a word about the monkey line.

It was more rhetorical as none of us can know based just on what Bo Selecta has said can we?

Would a release clause mean he can choose whichever club he likes for that minimum amount, or that we must accept some offer above that amount, but are at liberty as to which we do accept? If it's the latter then at least we can trigger a bidding war and get reasonable money for him.

I can see Werner Herzog, Dappy and John Beresford too. quality picture.

As is generally the case with the more reasonable posters i'm not even sure what the argument is here. I think we agree broadly, and semantics is the only issue. The first 9 games were easier. Only 3 games against the current top 10, average league position of the opposition was 13th, but we did what we've never done before and got results from those easy games. 19 points from that was brilliant. The 9 games in November/December was a harder test, some harder teams, average position of 9th. 8 points from those games is not good enough considering 5 of the teams are lower than us (between 9th and 18th). We earned the points early in the season so we could afford to drop them more recently, we've played every team and have our current position on merit. My view is the more recent form, with injuries and suspensions, is a better indicator of how the second half of the season will go than that initial run when we had a first 11 that didn't need to change at all. I'll be astounded if we manage to get 30 points out of 57 again....but I was astounded when we did it earlier, so fingers crossed.

I think games against 18th, 15th, 12th, 11th, 9th, 6th, 4th, 2nd and 1st is pretty representative. A good breadth of the league there. The discussion was November/December so we only played Man u once in that period.

I thought that was wiped clean in the new year??? Wahey. 6th it is

I didn't even see it as much of a blip to be honest as we knew going in to November we were in for a tough run of fixtures, you can include the away game at Stoke in that too if you like as I didn't expect to pick up 3 points there. The blip seems to be losing away to Norwich, at home to West Brom and a draw with Swansea, the Swansea game we were dominant in and deserved to win and I didn't think we deserved to lose to West Brom either even though we were a little open in search of a winner but it happens, if we had picked up maximum points against them we would be sat in 4th on 40 points. Other than those 3 we had Chelsea and Everton at home and Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Bolton away so as I said not an easy run. But you expect to finish above Everton, Liverpool and Bolton. I agree it's not an easy run, but once you add Swansea, Nowich and WBA, then it's a pretty representative run of league games, not paricularly difficult. 4 of the top 6 in 9 games obviously isn't 'representative' and one of them we played twice so that's 5 of 9 fixtures. It's simple mathematics alone. You also can't have an 'easy' run to start with and then a 'representative' run. Really basic stuff this and showing a bit of an agenda bias if I'm being honest. That or stupidity and I don't think it's the latter. We lost other games we might have expected to win and that's where it hurt, but that happens when you lose key personnel and an established core. People wouldn't have it that we had an easy start though...Spurs, Arsenal etc. meant saying the start was easy was to be unfair. So equally you can't have it both ways now and say it was easy and the hard run excuses the lack of points from the last 2 months. Where I was willing to give due credit to the team for their results over their first 9 games irrespective of (what I thought was generally easier) opposition, I think it's perfectly reasonable to now say that 3rd bottom over 9 games is not good enough, irrespective of opposition. I agree, those 9 games were harder than the first 9. But taking a third of the points total is a massive and worrying drop off.

Our starting 11 is better than most....shame we only have 8 of them for the next month, and another few of them just a yellow or 2 short of a ban.

I didn't even see it as much of a blip to be honest as we knew going in to November we were in for a tough run of fixtures, you can include the away game at Stoke in that too if you like as I didn't expect to pick up 3 points there. The blip seems to be losing away to Norwich, at home to West Brom and a draw with Swansea, the Swansea game we were dominant in and deserved to win and I didn't think we deserved to lose to West Brom either even though we were a little open in search of a winner but it happens, if we had picked up maximum points against them we would be sat in 4th on 40 points. Other than those 3 we had Chelsea and Everton at home and Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool and Bolton away so as I said not an easy run. But you expect to finish above Everton, Liverpool and Bolton. I agree it's not an easy run, but once you add Swansea, Nowich and WBA, then it's a pretty representative run of league games, not paricularly difficult. EDIT: sorry, not Liverpool of course.

Not sure what you're basing that on exactly. We're still without Taylor and in additrion we've lost Tiote (if he was rusty before he was MOM material against Man U) and Ba (52% of our goals). How does that make us look much stronger?

You can listen to my favourite tracks of 2011 here... http://grooveshark.com/#!/playlist/Best+Of+2011/64788442 Removal of the ipod from the work environment meant I listened to half the stuff i normally do though. I envy you Meenzer.

It wasn't just a December blip at all. We took 8 points from 9 games in November & December. That's almost half of the season so far. Only Bolton and QPR had worse records over that 8 week period. The Man U result was great fun, and the performance one of our best, but I'm not reading anything into that for our long term chances. That was the bright spot on our current downward trend, rather than the previous 2 months being a blip on our ongoing charge into Europe.

There. Are you fucking happy? Champion, ta, we'll be able to see every divot on their funny bumpy pitches.

ITV are covering it live and highlight shows from 22nd ITV4 will broadcast four live games from the African Cup of Nations, which takes place from January 21st to February 12th in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea: one key game from the group stages (Ivory Coast v Burkina Faso), plus live coverage of one quarter final, one semi final and the final. Poor show from them too.

You should have started watching a local team in the flesh

You can understand owners/chairmen seeing relegation as the end of the world when it costs them tens of millions. You can understand it from managers when it usually means their jobs, or players who have that blot on their CV, and prefer all the trappings of being a premier league player. But quite honestly, I think fans have been manipulated into seeing relegation as the end of the world when it has very little impact on our matchgoing routine or enjoyment of the game. You get close ups of all these fannies crying on the last day of the season as if their mam just died or their club has gone out of business. Do they think that if only they had survived, then next season would be the one where they challenge for the league title? There's 88 tames making up the numbers and hoping for a good cup run, any of those 88 that decide the cup isn't important are just existing in a state of financial limbo, paying good money to watch their team ensure TV income rather than chase ANY silverware.